


what we've been missing

by darksideofmyroom



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, Camping, Cheesy, Domestic Fluff, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Fights, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Longing tm, M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Nostalgia, Pining Arthur, Recreational Drug Use, Road Trips, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Stargazing, Summer Love, Tenderness, arthur's love language is quality time, i tried to be dramatic but this is cuter than intended, up to you i have no clue, way too many metaphors, when and where is it set?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-22 22:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30045528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darksideofmyroom/pseuds/darksideofmyroom
Summary: "I'll come with you" he says.He doesn't even think about it, it simply spills out of him, as naturally as a heart beat.Like some primitive instinct to look for water and warmth, his whole body urges him to follow Merlin, to go with him, to not let him leave him behind.
Relationships: Gwaine & Merlin (Merlin), Gwen & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwen/Lancelot (Merlin), Lancelot & Merlin (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), there's more but those are the main ones
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	what we've been missing

**Author's Note:**

> hey everybody! i somehow ended up reading way too much fanfic about this show, so here we are! and i am vey glad to be posting this,cause i just finally got a burst of inspiration and it feels great to be able to share it! i hope it won't wear out before i finish writing this lol.  
> anyway, this is a bit of a messy work, but all in all i quite like it, and i hope you will too :)

> _ I've heard it said _
> 
> _ That the thrill of romance _
> 
> _ Can be like a heavenly dream _
> 
> _ I go to bed with a prayer _
> 
> _ That you'll make love to me _
> 
> _ Strange as it seems _

**Part One**

Merlin comes back in the middle of May, after two weeks spent away, half at his uncle’s and half on the road.

He calls at 9 pm from Lancelot’s apartment; the phone rings twice before Arthur gets to it and picks it up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me!” and Arthur knows right away, he can almost feel the smile that must be accompanying the words on the other end of the line, so very close, and he knows, somehow.

They talk quietly, as if exchanging secrets, and Merlin tells stories of weird and wonderful strangers, of night views of roads stretched to the ends of the universe and colorful fields, of scary big revelations. 

Arthur sits by the open window, for it’s a warm night, and the crickets are already singing, and he listens, laughs, teases. It’s a liquid kind of moment.

“So will you come by tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Alright” another smile he can’t see “well, goodnight then, Arthur.”

It is a good night. A soft one, that smells faintly of new beginnings, and tastes like the opposite of loneliness.

  
  
  
  


Lancelot lives just above an antiques store. Merlin technically lives there as well, though with much less constancy.

It’s a small place, but it’s got the nice quality of being lived in, with lots of pretty paintings and photographs in frames, warm lights, candles, and a big persian rug in the living room beneath the worn out leather couch. It’s cozy, welcoming, and Lance also happens to be the best host, which is just another reason why his apartment is their favourite place to meet, despite its being barely bigger than a shoebox.

Arthur shows up with two bottles of wine, as per usual, with something like excitement flickering in his chest. And it’s dumb, really, he thinks as he knocks on the door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like some kind of schoolboy.

Gwen comes to open just a few seconds later. 

“Arthur!” she greets him, beaming, and he melts a bit at her light.

She rises lightly on her toes and wraps her arms around his neck, squeezing him the right amount of tight, and he immediately encircles her waist and breathes in her familiar scent.

“Hey Gwen” he smiles as they break apart “How have you been?”

“Good! And busy. Missed you lots, too. C’mon, come in, we’ve got some catching up to do.”

He hands her the bottles, which she takes after giving him a kiss on the cheek, and he follows willingly as she leads him through the narrow entrance to the kitchen.

“Guys, Arthur’s finally here!” 

He does have a tendency to always be the last one to show up, though he’s pretty sure he couldn’t have been that late this time. He halfheartedly rolls his eyes and lets it pass.

As he steps into the room he’s met with the sight of Lancelot wearing an apron, two different pots on the fire and the oven turned on. 

He always ends up cooking too much food, which has become kind of a problem, since it’s so good that nobody ever feels like letting it go to waste, and they very often make it to the end of the night feeling too full to move.

“Hi Arthur!” he calls from behind his shoulder, flashing his teeth.

Behind him Leon’s sitting at the table, prodding at the radio, flicking through the stations and finding nothing but static. He stands up as soon as he notices Arthur, who goes up to him and hugs him quickly, though no less affectionately than he did Gwen.

“Well, hello boys” says Arthur, squeezing Lancelot’s shoulder and receiving a small pat on the hand in response.

It’s quite easy, being with your people, he thinks as he looks at the real smiles on his friend’s tired faces, and realizes that some sort of weight must’ve lifted from his shoulders.

“It’s good to see you, Arthur. It’s been a while” Leon comments, in that honest way of his.

“Yeah” he agrees. Gwen nods, too.

“Oh, and Arthur” calls Lance, as he stirs the pasta in his pot “he’s in the living room. Go say hello, why don’t you?”

“Do I have to?” he asks, though the space in his chest shrinks, just a little, just enough.

Gwen slaps him on the side of the head, lightly, though her eyes are shining in amusement.

“Okay! I’ll go” he laughs, and quickly disappears out of the room.

It takes five steps, six at most, to get to the living room, and Arthur makes each one as slow as he can. Absurdly, the thought of space pops into his mind. Something about floating.

Merlin is sitting on the persian rug (red and blue, with a bit of gold), his back to Arthur.

In front of him Elyan is showing him paper after paper filled with colour and drawings, and they’re talking animatedly, hands flying in the air, fingers pointing out details in the picture. 

Arthur watches them silently for a couple of seconds, before Elyan’s head snaps up to meet his gaze, his eyes lighting up in recognition.

“Arthur!” he exclaims, unknowingly greeting him the same way his sister did.

At that Merlin’s head turns in his direction so fast, that it gives Arthur whiplash to find his eyes fixed on him so suddenly. He flashes him a grin and quickly goes to stand up, but he only ends up face planting in a rather embarrassing manner.

Laughter explodes in the room like a bubble, and Arthur gets carried away by the feeling of it, rising and filling up the space, overflowing in bright waves, and everything is suddenly whole.

He laughs and takes in the way Merlin scowls at them, the tips of his ears turning red. 

It is a homecoming, in the simplest of ways.

  
  
  
  


Later, after a delicious dinner spent squeezed in at the table, they all end up in the living room.

Lancelot sits on the armchair, Gwen on his lap, and he threads his fingers through her hair, braiding it and then undoing his work, again and again. Arthur gets lost in the soft movements of his fingers for a while, and wonders if he would be good at weaving. 

Probably yes, it is Lancelot, after all.

Gwen is reading out loud from a collection of Greek myths, after Merlin repeatedly begged her to. Her voice is beginning to get hoarse, but the rhythm of her words never falters, and she paints pictures in the ceiling through dialogue and intonation. It is soothing and ancient, as storytelling always is. 

Leon and Elyan sit on the couch, talking about football in excited whispers.

Leon attempted to teach them a card game, earlier, with little to no result. 

So then he and Elyan went back to trying to fix the radio, and after half an hour of cacophonic sounds and static, they gave that up for mindless chatter.

Arthur participated in their conversation for a while, until he became too tipsy to truly follow the sudden change of theme and the different arguments that kept popping up.

Now he lies on the rug, his head resting against Merlin’s as they listen to Gwen’s stories.

It’s comforting in the most exhilarating of ways; his heart thumping and his eyes drooping.

Merlin keeps shifting, humming and breathing, distracting Arthur from everything else at regular intervals of time, as if daring him to try and forget his presence.

Gwen begins talking about Phaeton and his quest to ride the chariot of the sun, and all of a sudden Merlin’s hand reaches out to grab Arthur’s wrist.

“I love this one” he gasps, cheeks flushed red from the wine and Elyan’s liquor, and Arthur feels it, down to his bones, just how much he’s missed him.

  
  
  
  


Merlin grew up on the road.

His father was a good man on the wrong side of the law, as Merlin’s mom had once told Arthur, and the first few years of his life they had lived like fugitives, never stopping anywhere long enough to build a home, or to feel safe.

Until Hunith decided that was no way to raise a child, and forced herself to let go of his love for a better future, for the good of her son.

Merlin doesn’t remember much, though there is a part of him that longs for a freedom that he feels had belonged to him then.

(When they were seventeen and sitting on the roof, under a million twinkling stars, Merlin had told Arthur he dreamed of running away. Of sneaking out late one night and just leaving to travel the world, to see everything there is to be seen and drink it up, make it his.

For months Arthur had lived with the terror of waking up one morning to find out that Merlin was simply gone, without a word or a warning.)

And so, wherever the possibility arises, he hits the road, loses himself in the wilderness of the streets, the universe of people waiting to be known. 

But he always comes back after an adventure.

He’s still attached to his port.

(Though sometimes Arthur asks himself,  _ for how long?  _ And it’s the kind of thought that burns.)

  
  
  
  


Everything falls back into the same sort of routine.

Arthur rides the train in the morning to get to class, he trains on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sees his father every two weeks and spends most evenings out.

What changes is sometimes Merlin comes over and spends the night, and in the morning, when Arthur’s still mostly asleep, he pulls the curtains open, bringing in the light.

“Rise and shine!” he sings songs, and Arthur gives him the finger or throws a pillow at his head, but it’s the best way to wake up.

He makes coffee for the both of them and spills sugar all over the tablecloth (it is white with little blue and lilac flowers, which Arthur’s mother embroidered on it, many many years ago, yet they still bloom with love).

They sit together on the train, shoulders and knees knocking together at every stop. Arthur tries to do his crosswords, Merlin draws silly faces on the corners of his worksheets. Sometimes he brings over a book and stops every once in a while to show Arthurs a nice bit, a beautiful phrase, or a particularly inventive insult.

At the station they say their goodbyes and fall back into different everyday rituals.

They move through the day like two little dots threading their separate, parallel paths through the paper, and right there at the end of the page, where the sun starts to fade and give way to the stars, their lines cross, they meet again.

And it’s pubs, Lance’s place, Arthur’s, a little Italian restaurant hidden in an alley, the cinema, a second hand bookshop just about to close, and there’s more and it’s all the same.

It’s all theirs. 

The city is just an excuse for them to meet, Arthur owns it, he can fit it in his pocket.

The nights would be blank if they didn’t invent them, one after the other, each more dark and shining.

So they laugh, they get drunk, run, stumble, they talk and talk and pour their souls out, sometimes there’s crying, sometimes singing, a lot of thinking, dreaming out loud.

And Arthur swears he can feel the blood in his veins vibrate with the ecstatic feeling of having found everything he’ll ever need. 

The fast and deep hum of  _ this is your place in the world _ rings blessedly in his ears everytime he turns to see Merlin by his side, and hears him say something stupid like:

“Let’s go to the zoo, tomorrow. I haven’t been to the zoo in...forever. It’s a bit sad sometimes, because all the animals don’t really wanna be there, you know? They’re prisoners. But I really want to see a panda right now.”

To which Arthur, with his insides melting and his fond eyes, can only reply:

“That’s ridiculous, we’re not going to the zoo. It smells bad, there’s too many kids, and I wanna sleep in tomorrow.”

All to then, of course, take Merlin to the zoo, and make sure he sees as many pandas as possible.

  
  
  
  


Arthur keeps remembering bits and pieces of the summer he and Merlin spent together when they were eighteen.

It was a sticky hot summer, full of nights spent outside, of long drives with the windows rolled down and of itching mosquito bites.

And every day tasted like popsicles, and every day slipped away with the most melancholic of sunsets. The clear skies and ripe fruits, the laughter, the scraped knees, seemed to join in together to the beat of a nostalgic song, giving life to the most painful of farewells: the farewell to time.

Arthur was aware of it, he knew that freedom and that sunlight somehow meant a closing chapter, and he clinged to every second like a drowning man.

It was the most wonderful summer, and the cruellest. And he knows there’s a reason he keeps remembering it now.

He swats the thought away, like a fly. But it itches, and the more he scratches the more it keeps him awake at night.

  
  
  


Of course Morgana finds a way to stick her nose into his business.

“So, did Merlin move in with you?” she asks so very casually, while they’re getting scones at the little shop near the park they have been going to since they were children.

“No” he frowns, taken aback by the question “you know he didn’t.”

Morgana only shrugs, as she brings her cup of tea to her lips and casually takes a sip.

“It’s only that, you see, he always seems to be at your place, doesn’t he?”

“That’s not true.”

Morgana raises her eyebrows and fixes him with a pointed look.

“I mean, yeah, we spend time together. He’s my best mate. There’s nothing weird about it” he grunts, and reaches for the butter on Morgana’s side of the table.

“Nobody said anything about it being weird. I’m just getting rid of a reasonable doubt, is all.”

Arthur grunts at that. He spreads butter, then fig jam on his scone, and a little bit falls on the table. Without thinking about it, he picks it up with his finger and licks it off.

Morgana rolls her eyes and gives him her best disgusted face. Arthur returns it with a bright smile.

“Anyway” he starts, after taking a bite. He’s still chewing as he speaks, mostly just to annoy his sister “It’s not like Merlin would ever move out of Lance’s place. I mean, who would? That’s the perfect deal. He cleans, cooks, offers moral support and everything. And he willingingly puts up with Merlin, too.”

“What if Lancelot and Gwen want to move in together?” she asks, slowly, cleaning her hands on a napkin.

“They don’t” he says, absolutely sure of his words, because they had talked about this, said they wanted to take it slow, with no pressure added. One second after he’s forced to second guess “Wait, did Gwen talk to you?! Did she tell you that? Is that why you brought up the topic?”

She scoffs in that unnervingly condescending way of hers. 

“No, it’s no. I’m simply talking hypothetically. If they move in together, and I do believe they will at some point, would you like Merlin to come live with you?”

Arthur can’t help but imagine it; the soft comfort of that presence multiplied by every day. Sharing meals, sharing spaces, brushing their teeth together every night, shoulders brushing before the sink. There’s humming in the afternoons and laughter at the dinner table. 

Merlin would probably get plants, and then end up killing them, and then feel bad. 

And it would all be…really quite nice.

“Uhm, I guess. If he pays rent on time” he mutters, his eyes fixed on his plate, on his half eaten scone and the piece of jam still left on the table.

When he finally gets the courage to look up at his sister, her expression has softened, her lip has curled softly upwards on one side, and her eyes shine with something that is probably understanding, but that Arthur can only read as judgement, or maybe pity, or something awful like that.

She doesn’t comment, but she knows. She probably already knew.

And Arthur really can’t stand her.

  
  
  
  


Merlin thinks they should get high together.

They have before, of course, but it was never just the two of them.

“And that simply won’t do, it doesn’t count.”

“Why? What changes if it’s just you and I?” he asks, genuinely curious to know the answer.

“Everything!” says Merlin, with one single, long breath, his eyes almost twinkling.

So now Arthur sits on his balcony and watches Merlin roll one up on his wooden coffee table.

The days have slowly slipped into June, the air is a bit stifled, and the moon bleeds silver all over the sky.

Arthur follows Merlin’s long fingers as they work, his thumbs curling and drawing little circles in the air, as his hands shake just slightly. He bites his lower lip in concentration, making Arthur’s focus shift.

When he licks the paper his eyes meet Arthur’s for a second, who’s forced to turn his head away, as if burned.

“There we go!” Merlin announces finally, twisting the longer end of the blunt to light it.

He brings it to his lips, from which it dangles dangerously as he tries to get the lighter to produce a spark.

The lighter is a bright green and it has a flower with a smiley face painted on it. It’s most definitely out of gas, though Merlin keeps stubbornly trying to make it work.

“Are we going to wait here all night?” he asks, and before Merlin can come up with whatever ridiculous response, he gets up and goes fetch the kitchen lighter inside. 

When he comes back, Merlin’s still fidgeting with the lighter, muttering something under his breath.

He snaps his head up to take in Arthur’s presence, and says: “Oh. Right, that’d work better, probably.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. He drags his chair right in front of Merlin, and sits down.

His friend puts the joint back between his lips, Arthur holds out his hand.

With a click the flame comes alive and Merlin inhales, breathing it in. 

The blunt evaporates in a series of languid moments; fingers brushing, cheeks hollowing, their shared saliva and breaths building a secret bridge between souls, and the smoke, swirling like daydreams.

Time slows, it speeds up. Time doesn’t really count.

Arthur feels like there’s a fire in his chest, heavy and bright red. His heartbeat screams in his ears, in an alarming, almost terrifying reminder of life. Everything is here, and then it gets lost in some weird thought, it’s shifting lenses, in and out of focus.

Merlin starts giggling, and it sounds like a lake, up in the mountains. Like  _ the _ lake up in the mountains, when they were eighteen and Arthur  _ felt it _ for the first time, and now he feels it every second, resting somewhere along his bones, getting dragged on and on by the erratic rhythm of his being.

“Hey” says Merlin.

Arthur turns to look at him and finds him sitting on the floor, legs crossed, with the silliest, brightest smile on his face, and his eyes twinkling and unfocused. He looks like a complete idiot, and Arthur bursts out laughing, and Merlin, inevitably, does too.

When it dies down to the happy bubble of a good time, Merlin calls him once again.

“Arthur” he breathes, the syllables echoing like a soft, and secret breeze “Arthur, you should start talking.”

“What? About what?”

“About whatever you’re thinking about, and then we’ll go from there, and we’ll start building up thoughts. And then it’ll feel like a different world, like meeting, but closer.”

He’s not sure what Merlin’s trying to say, but he catches the feeling of it, and it sounds like a dream. And suddenly he’s aching for it, for that connection, that link binding them more tightly than simple circumstances. A deliberate choice of togetherness.

_ I want your thoughts to lead mine. _ His hands shake.

“How do you know that’ll work?” he asks, because he needs it to work.

“Trust me” he says, with the sincerity of a child. 

Arthur couldn’t help but trust him even if he knew he was lying 

“It’ll work. The weed helps” a sliver of white teeth, and Arthur gets the ridiculous thought that that smile must be the long lost sister of the moon.

Should he say that out loud? 

No, no. Bury it deep.

“Okay, alright” he nods a couple times, trying to concentrate on a thought, and the movement makes him slightly dizzy.

He looks at Merlin, sitting at his feet, and all he can think about is the strand of hair curling over his forehead, or how his ears almost look like butterflies as they stick out, as if they’re ready to take flight. Oh and there’s a cartoon! But he can’t really say it, cause it’d sound mean. He doesn’t want to sound mean, and he doesn’t want to sound smitten, either, and it’s all quite annoying cause he can’t find anything that’d be right to say.

Before he can come up with something, Merlin breaks the silence.

“Let’s go inside” and he pulls himself off the ground, takes Arthur’s hand, leads him indoors, and to his walk-in closet. 

They step inside and Merlin closes the door behind them.He doesn’t bother turning on the light, and so the darkness wraps herself around them like a blinding, comforting blanket.

“It’s like seven minutes in heaven” he says, and immediately regrets it.

“Yeah” he hears Merlin whisper from somewhere near him, and he sounds like he’s thinking of something, Arthur can almost picture frowning lines on his brow.

He reaches for the switch, and the worn yellow light flickers on.

It almost seems as if they’re in a spaceship, he thinks, and he tells Merlin as well, who laughs long and deep, filling up Arthur’s chest with that same old bursting happiness.

“We’re in space in our space” he replies, his eyes crinkling. 

It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but yes, _ yes, _ that’s it, and it’s everything Arthur could ask for.

And so they end up sitting on the floor, distances melt, their voices get quiet and true, then they rise in hysterical laughter. The room shifts, it expands in waves, and everything flows on a surface so smooth and so comfortable, that Arthur gets carried away with it, too. 

At one point they start telling stories, remembering things. They recall the stupid things they used to do as teenagers, Merlin shares anecdotes of his trips that Arthur’s never heard before, and they exchange childhood stories, most of which they already know by heart.

When it gets quieter for a second, and Arthur’s love begins to pulse with the need to be expressed, he tells Merlin about his earliest memory of his mum, and one of the very few he has.

He remembers reaching out with his hands to grab something, he was crying, and his mother took his little fingers into her palm, and kissed them one by one. 

“That’s such a nice image” Merlin chokes out, and promptly bursts into tears.

Arthur is disarmed in front of such vulnerability for a second, before he comes to his senses.

“You’re such a girl” he teases, though it probably sounds way more tender than intended as he pulls Merlin into his arms, and holds him so very tightly.

Merlin laughs in between sobs, because that’s something he does, and Arthur feels so much, and so beyond his understanding that he believes he might tear up soon, as well.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be” he shushes, as if Merlin were a child that needed reassuring 

“I just” he starts, his head resting in the safe dent between Arthur’s neck and his shoulder “I think I really love your mum, because she loved you so much,  _ so much,  _ and I swear I could feel it. It’s weird, I know, but-”

A dam breaks in Arthur’s chest. 

He pulls Merlin away by his shoulders and then cups his face between his hands, and their eyes meet, and both are watery. Slowly, almost following a natural pull, their foreheads come to rest against each other.

“Merlin, you’re…”  _ so fucking precious to me. You’re the most beautiful person I ever had the absolute pleasure to get to know and I’ll never find anyone else who fits in the creases of my heart as easily as you do. Wherever I go, I carry you with me, and I long for you to take me everywhere you go. I think of you first thing in the morning, so that I’ll start the day in a good mood, and at night I conjure up the thought of you before falling asleep, hoping that you’ll join me in my dreams. And these words should sound way too sweet, but they don’t, because I mean every single one of them, I feel all of this fully, and really and in every moment. _

“You’re really something else” he says, forcing a smile that’s too heavy to be genuine.

> The words leave a bittersweet taste on his tongue, it manages to make the high wear off, and it lasts all through the night.

**Author's Note:**

> this chapter was supposed to be all of the first part of the story and have like, 7ooo words. but then i kept thinking of way too many scenes, and i started to feel the need for validation, so yeah, this is it. i hope you liked it anyway!  
> so a few things: the quote at the beginning is from lover man by billie holiday, a song i've been obsessed with lately. this fic is also kind of inspired by jack kerouac's on the road, and there's a scene in the book that i love, in which the song is mentioned.  
> now, i want to apologize for the mistakes you might find in this, i didn't really read through it and english isn't my first language, so feel absolutely free to point them out! also it is very probable that i mixed british and american english and got a very messy result, so sorry about that as well.  
> if you feel like letting me know your thoughts, whether it's positive feedback or helpful criticism, or both, please please pleaseee do. im not saying i need it, but i do. im begging for it.  
> I hope you have a wonderful day and thank you very very much for reading this through the end! love ya!


End file.
